


Until I Love Myself

by bisexualamy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bisexual Tony Stark, Coming of Age, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, MIT Era, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Iron Man 1, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Self-Discovery, mlm author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11254392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualamy/pseuds/bisexualamy
Summary: In 1930s Brooklyn, a young Steve Rogers discovers a world he never knew he belonged to at the docks walking distance from his apartment. At MIT in the 1980s, a young Tony Stark struggles to reconcile what his feelings for a fellow student mean for his family's public image.(A comparative look at how Steve Rogers and Tony Stark come to terms with their own bisexuality.)





	Until I Love Myself

**Author's Note:**

> I find contrasting Steve and Tony to be super interesting, and I've always wanted to do a fic exploring the differences in how they handle their bisexuality, so here we are! Please note that this is **not** a Stony fic and Steve and Tony will not be interacting throughout the course of this story. This is just a side-by-side comparison. Also, as a bi guy myself, I know a lot of mlm's internalized homophobia is often used in a "torture porn" fashion for straight audiences, so I tried my best to avoid that kind of writing. Internalized homophobia is a very important topic that needs to be addressed in a respectful manner, and I hope I succeeded in doing that.
> 
> Also, a lot of the information about the gay culture around Steve's neighborhood was taken from [this](http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/213805.html) so thank you for that! Finally, trigger warning for anti-gay slurs/language.

Tony Stark’s first introduction to relationships was the balancing act his parents maintained, so elaborate it was akin to the Olympic routines he’d see every few summers on the television. He never got the impression that they weren’t happy together, but he often got the impression that their relationship maintained an element of business that wasn’t present in other marriages. Being happily married to Howard Stark was another olympic feat, not because of insensitivity or emotionless, like speculation would say, but because he could never quite shake his first love of invention. Maria had to not only know that she was sharing her husband with his wild imagination, but enjoy it. She had to embrace that fact that his mind would never shut off, and in turn, he too embraced every part of her. Her quick wit, her creativity, the fact that she’d never stop pressing him about Tony. He became the devoted husband that decades before, his friends swore he could never become.

But Tony knew that no matter how deep their love ran, there was an element of artificiality undercutting every aspect of Stark life that didn’t occur behind closed doors, and even then, the risk of scandal loomed overhead. The trick, his father would say, was to not do anything in private you wouldn’t want out in public. When phrased so simply, it sounded like a wholesome philosophy for leading an honest life. When coming out of Howard Stark’s mouth, it sounded like a warning.

Scandal tinged business with a vile color that was often hard to clean off, so for a while, Tony made the papers with shining stories of his incredible genius. Building circuit boards and motor engines before the age of ten, it was good publicity for both Stark Industries and the Stark family, but Howard Stark had grown paranoid with age, and a child was a volatile variable. Any bit of bad press seemed to cancel out Tony’s accomplishments, and sent his father into a state of anger and callousness. They ran stories on Howard Stark’s drinking, on falling stock prices, on speculated layoffs, and when the Stark empire would finally crash and burn. Tony may have been a new hope for future, but he was too young to do anything now besides change the subject for a bit.

It was this that made Tony realize a few key facts. First, that the Stark legacy he would eventually inherit perpetually teetered on the edge of a cliff of public opinion. Second, that reporters were ravenous and always present, and third, that people simply couldn’t look away from a car wreck. The bigger the flames, the more cars in the pileup, the more they stared, and the fall of a giant was a fireshow.

Soon, Tony operated like there was always someone watching.

For him, high school was a blur. There wasn’t time for dating, for friends even, especially when his peers were driving cars and buying beer, and he was barely a year into puberty. Pimply-faced Tony was before a well needed growth spurt when his thirteen year old hands displayed his diploma before a sea of reporters, ready to run tomorrow morning’s story about how the heir to the Stark fortune was on his way to MIT while his voice was still dropping.

It was 1983, years before President Reagan’s administration would even acknowledge the AIDS crisis, and at least a decade before being gay was a concept deemed suitable enough for television. Tony had heard less flattering words for “gay” thrown around as the ultimate insult as he walked through the halls of his high school. To him, the word had no other meaning. “Faggot” was simply someone who couldn’t bother to be a man, something to avoid. The concept of a man falling in love with another man was so distant, foreign, even, that if the thought ever did pop into his mind, he dismissed that nonsense as quickly as it appeared. Who had time for hypotheticals anyway.

***

The first time Steve visited the Naval yards near his home, it was 1925, there was no war on, and he was seven. He wasn’t sure what curiosity drew him there. Maybe something about the military fascinated him, maybe he just liked observing the towering ships and the men in uniform, or maybe something about being this close to the ocean relaxed him, despite the awful smell. Whatever the case, he’s sit far back, not even on the beach, and watch the men run drills or maintain ships. There was never a ton of activity, after all, the Great War was over, America had won, and everyone was certain that those horrors could never be outdone, but still, the Navy ran their drills and kept up their ships, as if they could feel another fight looming on the horizon.

At first, Steve did nothing but watch. Sitting not too close, trying to obscure himself with the crowds of passersby, he’d lose track of time staring out towards the harbor and wondering what it would be like to train with the Navy men or board one of those ships. Soon, he began to bring a sketchpad with him, drawing quick studies of the different sailors he saw going to and from their various duties, sometimes sketching out whole scenes of towering ships and uniformed sailors.

As he grew older and found other ways to get into more interactive trouble, he visited the docks less and less, but still passed them on his way home. Sometimes, he’d stop and sit, inching his way closer to the beach, drawing or observing, depending on his mood, not quite understanding what attracted him to these repetitive, structured scenes. He felt a pull, almost magnetic in quality, a force inexplicable that kept him coming back.

When he was sixteen, it was 1934, the Depression was well underway, but still the Navy drudged on. As he stayed out later and later, getting in more serious trouble which he swore to Bucky was all in good fun, he’d pass the docks well after the sun was down. But still, there was always something. It was if these men never slept. This particular time, the day had long since faded, but the faint lights of the docks were still on, and Steve could see a few men milling around the ships. He was tired, a bit beat up, and really ought to have gone home by now, but he felt that pull drawing him to sit on the sand, closer than he ever had before, and let the darkness hide him from view. At this distance, he could hear two of the sailors talking to each other.

“Got any plans, Frank?” one asked the other.

“Going out in a bit,” Frank replied. “Shift ends soon. Can’t let the whole night go to waste.” He gave the first man a bit of a lewd grin, who returned the knowing smile.

“You get going,” he said. “I’ll finish up here. Wouldn’t want to keep you.”

He gave Frank a light punch on the arm, and Frank laughed.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, before walking up the beach towards the road.

Steve knew he should stay, or better yet, go home, but his curiosity got the better of him. Taking care to walk quietly, he waited a minute before following Frank up the road, always a few seconds behind him. Frank walked with purpose, but kept his movements small and inconspicuous as he made his way up Henry Street. Soon, he was crossing the road towards the St. George Hotel. Steve crossed one block over, making sure that Frank didn’t see him, then crept back towards the hotel, slipping into an alley near the entrance.

In front of the hotel was a man smoking a cigarette. He tapped some of the ashes off it with his finger before taking another drag. It was as he did this that Frank approached him, leaning against the side of the hotel to mirror the smoking man’s body language.

“Warm night,” Frank said.

“Sure is,” the smoking man replied.

There was a slight pause.

“You waiting for someone?” Frank asked.

“I could be,” the man said, “if that’s what you want.”

Frank chuckled.

“I’m waiting for someone too,” he said, “if that’s what _you_ want.”

The man dropped his cigarette, put it out with his shoe, and turned to Frank for the first time during this whole exchange.

“Why don’t we go upstairs and figure that out?”

“Fine by me,” Frank replied.

The two walked into the hotel, leaving the street empty. The only way Steve was certain he hadn’t imagined this conversation was the crushed cigarette still smoking on the sidewalk. He might not have seen anything like this before, but he wasn’t dense. It wasn’t a task to read between the lines.

His walk home was perfumed by the smell of that man’s cigarette and peppered with the two men’s voices, their conversation replaying in Steve’s mind over and over, repeating in its entirety until he reached his own front steps. Did men do this? How common was this?

He was determined to find out more.

***

It took Tony a week of college to figure out that he hated his roommate. He’d tried and failed to convince his parents to pay the increased price of a single, but they wouldn’t let go of the idea that he needed to be “immersed in the college environment” if he was ever going to fit in. From Tony’s perspective, they failed to consider the fact that a fourteen-year-old could never fit in among students who liked to consider themselves adults.

His roommate wasn’t too keen on the idea of rooming with Tony either, and the two rarely spoke. Tony was used to a tense environment, arguably, it should’ve felt homey, but his boredom with his academics coupled with his constant need to _do_ something made having no one who could share in his miseries of being too young to do anything absolutely unbearable.

It was around this same time that Tony was in his room, homework abandoned, pouring over a book to stop himself from feeling too antsy, when he heard a knock on the door. Tony looked up to see his roommate scowl in his direction. His roommate was sitting at his desk, immersed in writing something, and Tony was sure he now blamed Tony’s desire to keep the door open for his lost train of thought. Ignoring the glance, Tony then turned his attention to the person in the doorway, and for a second, it felt like his mind had stopped running.

In front of him was a guy in an MIT sweatshirt, one hand in his jeans pocket, the other ready to knock again on the opened door. When Tony met his eye, he started talking.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said, noticing Tony’s roommate’s annoyed expression. He took care not to enter the room any further.

Tony felt absolutely taken aback, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure why. By all accounts, this was a perfectly normal guy. He looked pretty athletic, nicely built, and welcoming, which wasn’t a vibe Tony got from most people in his dorm. But there was something else, about the way that Tony took notice of how the shadows played across his face, and the relaxed way he stood, that seemed to cause Tony to blanketly stare at the person in his doorway.

“I’m James,” he said, addressing Tony. “James Rhodes. Are you Tony Stark?”

It was the sound of a direct question that restarted Tony’s brain. Still, it took him a second to stutter out, “yes.”

He heard his roommate scoff.

“Good,” James said, giving Tony a warm smile that he definitely hadn’t anticipated. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have?”

“Yeah,” James said. “You’re the only other guy in this building that’s too young to do anything interesting around here.” When Tony didn’t answer, James continued. “You’re fourteen, I’m sixteen, and really, that’s enough for some people to never want to talk to you again.” He chuckled, and Tony’s roommate, who’d been getting angrier every time another word came out of James’ mouth, very deliberately put down his pencil.

“Can you two fags take this bullshit conversation somewhere else?” he asked, in no uncertain terms. It looked like James was about to say something else, but Tony was no longer paying attention. Sure, he’d heard that insult used before, but never directed towards him, and there was something about the insinuation his roommate just made, combined with the way that word felt like a punch in the gut, that made him jump to the defensive.

“I’m not- we’re not-”

“Calm down,” his roommate said, “or I’ll actually start thinking there’s something more here.”

“We can go somewhere else,” James said. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. That’s is, if you’re cool with that, Tony.”

Tony took another second to think over what just happened, glancing between James and his roommate, who’d now gone back to writing in his notebook.

“Sure, let’s do that,” Tony muttered, hopping off his bed and then walking down the hallway with James. Even so, he took care to put a safe distance between him and his new acquaintance, hands in his pockets, eyes straight ahead, the word ‘fag’ still ringing in his ears.

***

The docks had always been something Steve kept to himself. There hadn’t been any conscious thought put into that decision. Steve was just going off of a gut feeling that he wanted something like this that was his, that he could enjoy feeling a sense of privacy, despite the sailors he watched and the people passing by on the sidewalk. For days, he tried to apply this same concept to getting more information about what went on at the St. George Hotel. Every night for almost the next week, he’d sit by the docks and trail a sailor headed in that direction, who sure enough picked up another man along the way, our outside the hotel, and went upstairs with him. Soon, Steve had to assume that this was a fairly common occurrence, and while not generally accepted, was something his neighborhood was fairly relaxed about. He even saw two men holding hands down the street towards the hotel, and the few people who saw them paid it no notice.

Soon, exploring just the area around the hotel wasn’t enough for Steve. This couldn’t be all these men did, after all, that would get boring after a while. But, as much as Steve hated to admit it, his skinny, 5’ 4” self wandering around Brooklyn at night wasn’t the best idea, especially if someone mistook him for someone cruising for another guy and tried to pick a fight.

It was this that first put the first blunt thought in Steve’s head of “what if a man tried to pick _me_ up?” It’d been a question he’d been dancing around every night he stood in the alley next to the St. George and watched the men on the street make covert arrangements for the night. It was followed by the question he’d actually been trying to avoid, which was, “would I _want_ a man to try and pick me up?”

It had been a question he’d taken care to avoid since he first discovered this secret community encompassing so many residents of his Brooklyn neighborhood. Something nagged at him, something like jealousy and longing, that they could go out and do this, even in secret, and he was stuck watching. Ever since that first night he’d caught himself picturing what it would be like to stand in front of the hotel, or walk down the street nearby, and have a man coyly grab his hand and ask, “any plans for the night?” It was a ludicrous fantasy, but Steve’s subconscious held onto it, even if his conscious mind dismissed it as soon as he became aware he was once again imagining it.

One night, he was standing in the alleyway near the St. George Hotel, like he’d done for several nights before, and saw what he perceived to be a typical scene of two men picking each other up for the night. But instead of going into the hotel, they took each other’s hand, and began to walk down the street. This was something Steve had never seen happen before, and he couldn’t fight his curiosity. After a moment’s consideration he began to follow them, carefully, down the dimly lit sidewalk.

They walked for several minutes, making conversation that was too quiet for Steve to overhear, until they turned onto a side road and went inside an unassuming brick building. Steve crept around to get a closer look, and from the street, could hear music playing from inside. There was a small window near the back where he standing, just a bit too high for him to see through, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He tried to jump up and grab onto the windowsill, but failed. It was then that, off to the side, he could see several cardboard boxes put out for tomorrow’s trash pickup. He dragged one over to below the window, stood on it, and saw a scene through the window he could’ve never imagined.

Inside were dozens of what Steve perceived to be couples. Men and men, women and women, holding each other, dancing, even kissing, and no one inside batted an eye. Off to the side of the large open space, Steve could see a bar and a bartender behind it, currently serving drinks to several patrons, and a band nearby playing music. The whole scene was making his head spin, but he felt something else, something that told him how _fantastic_ this was and how he needed to be a part of it.

He stepped off the cardboard box, put it back in the pile, and started walking back towards the main road, staring at the intersection this bar was on for so long that the street signs were burned into his brain. He couldn’t forget where this was, not before he got to experience it himself.

***

After meeting James (who Tony would later begin to call Rhodey, insisting that there were plenty of Jameses in the world, but only one Rhodey), Tony’s perspective on his college experience shifted dramatically. His classes were still boring, and his roommate was still an ass, but, almost overnight, he had a friend. He and Rhodey clicked in a way Tony couldn’t describe. They thought along the same wavelength, and though they disagreed on certain politics or philosophies or if Tony was taking something too far (be it a joke, idea, or machine he insisted he could build), they agreed on what was important, that they liked and respected each other, and Tony wasn’t sure if he’d ever had that before.

Rhodey’s parents also hadn’t graced him with the option of a single, but his roommate was almost never around. It took Tony a few days to notice, but only a few minutes to ask what the deal was.

“He spends every waking moment with his girlfriend,” Rhodey said, “and she’s already moved off campus. Really, that works out for both of us. He gets privacy with his girlfriend, and I get privacy here.”

Nothing about the way Rhodey had said ‘privacy’ indicated that he wanted it for the same reason his roommate wanted it with his girlfriend, but nevertheless Tony felt a pang of dejection from a source he couldn’t quite place. To hide it, he nodded and said, “makes sense,” before returning to his problem set.

Fall passed more quickly than Tony could’ve ever imagined, and in those months, he saw Rhodey almost every day. Whether it was working on homework in Rhodey’s room, or grabbing lunch with him in between classes, or talking with him at odd hours of the night because they just couldn’t drop a conversation, Tony felt a comfort with Rhodey he’d never experienced before, and if he didn’t think too hard about why, that didn’t scare him. Sure, sometimes he noticed how the sunlight made Rhodey glow in a way Tony couldn’t stop looking at, and sometimes he felt like his voice was so soothing it could put Tony to sleep in a heartbeat, but Rhodey was his best friend. All guys were close with their best friends.

In late November, right before the two of them were set to return home for Thanksgiving, Tony was on Rhodey’s bed, stretched out in a way so typical of their relationship, while Rhodey sat in a nearby desk chair. There was a lull in their conversation, but that had never bothered Tony, not when he felt such a comfort around Rhodey.

“You’re going home for Thanksgiving?” Rhodey asked suddenly.

“You know I am,” Tony replied.

Rhodey paused.

“What’s that like?” Rhodey asked.

“What?” Tony said, sitting up. “Going home to ‘millionaire and genius Howard Stark?’” When he said his father’s name, his tone was mocking and dismissive.

“No,” Rhodey replied. “I know you don’t like to talk about him. I just meant - well, I guess I meant, your family sounds a lot more disjointed than mine. Everyone’s sort of doing their own thing, so I guess I wanted to know, what that’s like.”

“Is your family not like that?”

“No,” Rhodey said. “We all get along pretty well. I take it family dinners aren’t really a thing in your house?”

Tony laughed.

“Maybe once a month, if we can pry my dad away from his workshop in the basement. Usually, I’ll just eat dinner in my room, or in the kitchen with Jarvis.”

“I bet he doesn’t like that,” Rhodey said with a smile, having heard all about Edwin Jarvis’ strictly proper nature.

“Oh, he hates it,” Tony said, then put on a mock English accent to say, “‘Mr. Stark, I must insist, it’s not suitable for you to have dinner in the kitchen when the dining room is already set for you, and perfectly so, I might add.’”

“I can’t believe a grown man calls you ‘Mr. Stark,’” Rhodey said, laughing. He got up from the desk chair and said, “scoot over, this is my bed too,” before sitting down.

“Didn’t you hear?” Tony asked, continuing Rhodey’s previous train of thought. “I’m the heir to Stark Industries. I’m a child genius. People probably referred to me as Mr. Stark while they were still changing my diapers.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rhodey replied. “But you’re ridiculous.”

It was now that Tony noticed that Rhodey was very close to him on the small, dorm room bed. Their knees were practically touching, and he didn’t know why that made his heart race.

“I’m not ridiculous,” Tony replied, but the words didn’t come out as indignant as he would’ve liked now that his attention was split. He stared up at Rhodey, the sixteen-year-old a few inches taller than him, Tony’s heart caught in this throat. It took him a second to realize that they’d stopped the conversation entirely, that instead of replying, Rhodey was also looking down at him.

When they kissed, Tony didn’t realize what was happening until a moment after it started, and even then, it took him another beat to realize that he liked it.

As soon as this thought crossed his mind, he tore himself away, even though he felt his heart sink as he did. He jumped off the bed and went to grab his bag.

“Tony, wait,” Rhodey said, watching as Tony scrambled to find his belongings strewn out across the room. “We need to talk about this. We can’t not talk about what just happened.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Tony said, still looking for his things. When he was finally sure he had everything, he went to leave, but Rhodey had gotten up to block the door.

“Let me leave,” Tony said.

“Tony, you don’t look okay,” Rhodey insisted.

“Of course I’m not okay!” Tony replied. “You kissed me! Why the fuck would you kiss me?”

“You kissed me back,” Rhodey said.

“That’s bullshit,” Tony replied. “I’m too smart to kiss you back.”

“This has nothing to do with intelligence-”

“Did you hear everything I said not even ten minutes ago?” Tony asked, taking care not to raise his voice even though he was ready to scream. His heart was racing and his hands were shaking, pulsing with a nervous energy that he couldn’t pay attention to right now. “Heir to the Stark fortune and industrial empire? Do you know how much the media loves to harass my family? Do you know how much they’d eat something like this up? I can see the tabloid headlines now: ‘Young Tony Stark’s Dirty Secret Revealed’. I’d probably make the front page.”

“Tony-”

“This is all irrelevant anyway. This never happened.”

“Tony, please-”

“You can’t say anything about this. I can’t have people thinking I’m a-”

The word was caught in this throat, but he couldn’t say it. Something about saying it out loud made all of this too real. A second of silence transpired between the two of them, Rhodey’s expression steadfast, and Tony still shaking.

“Let me leave,” Tony said quietly, “and don’t come by my room again.”

Rhodey took a pause, and then begrudgingly stepped away from the door. Tony pushed past it, eyes fixed on the hallway in front of him. As he walked back to his room, he tried to push the memories of what had just happened down into the depths of his brain, never to be addressed again, but something was nagging at him, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push it away. Some part of him was happy about what had just happened.

***

The next day, Steve had enlisted Bucky in his mission. After going over to his house and explaining everything he’d learned over the last week, he finished with, “so you gotta- you gotta pretend to be-”

“Your guy?” Bucky asked with a smile. It was only now that Steve noticed that Bucky wasn’t half as thrown by everything Steve had discovered as Steve had been.

“Yeah…” Steve said, eyeing Bucky quizzically. “Just so we can get ourselves into the bar. I don’t know why, Buck, but I gotta see it.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Bucky said. “We’ve done way more questionable things than this.”

That night, Steve dressed himself up in a nice button down and tan slacks, and met Bucky down near the docks that had started this whole ordeal. When he saw Bucky, partially illuminated by a nearby streetlight, looking handsome as ever in his own button down and slacks that fit him so well, Steve stopped himself. He felt the same feelings returning that he’d felt in those rare moments he’d entertained letting a guy pick him up near the St. George Hotel.

“You ready for a night on the town?” Bucky asked as Steve approached him. Steve chuckled, but he felt himself blushing despite himself.

The two walked past the St. George Hotel towards the bar on Middagh Street. As they got to a darker part of the neighborhood, and inched closer towards their destination, Bucky took Steve’s hand. It caught Steve a bit off guard, and he jumped slightly.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, “I just figured, you know, play the part, right?” But there was something in his voice that sounded like disappointment.

“No, good instinct,” Steve replied, holding more tightly onto Bucky’s hand as they turned down the side street the bar was on. As they stood at the front door, Steve only had a moment to wonder if they were going to card him when Bucky asked, “ready?” and opened the doors.

The music of the band was what hit Steve first, and then, the smell of alcohol. Around him, he saw many of the same couples as before, sitting on couches holding each other, dancing near the band, or drinking at the bar. No one gave him or Bucky a second thought.

Being in this place, seeing men loving each other and women holding each other, and people of all backgrounds dressed up differently and ostentatiously, didn’t shake Steve like he thought it might’ve. Instead, in a strange way, he felt at home. It was like being in this place finally released his last mental block, the last thing keeping him from realizing how much he belonged here. All those daydreams of meeting a man at the St. George Hotel, the insatiable curiosity he had in this entire culture existing under his nose his entire life, they came together like a puzzle whose missing pieces had finally been discovered. And then there was-

“Dance with me,” he said, turning to Bucky.

“Sure thing,” Bucky said. “After all, you are my date for the night.”

The band was playing an upbeat tune, and before Steve could blink, he was dancing with Bucky like they were made for it. The whole thing felt more natural than any experience he’d ever had. The dimly lit room, the smell of booze, and Bucky’s face smiling at him, it all joined together to make a memory Steve knew he had to hold onto. If this was only for tonight, let it be the best night of his life.

They danced until they felt like their feet couldn’t take it anymore, but just as Steve was about to suggest that they sit down on a nearby couch, the band changed up their tempo. They began to play a slow ballad, and Steve couldn’t pass up the idea of being in Bucky’s arms as they swayed together.

“You game?” Bucky asked. Steve smiled and said, “damn right I am.”

Bucky was taller, so Steve let him lead, and they moved around the dancefloor like nothing else mattered. In Bucky’s arms, Steve felt the most comfortable and secure he’d ever felt. He wanted to live in this moment, to drag this feeling out for as long as possible, and never lose it. It was then that again he thought that, after this night, this may never happen again. That Bucky might never hold him again, that this bar would become a distant memory, and that he’d have to go back to scoping out alleyways and wishing for something he only now understood.

As the song drew to a close, Steve knew he couldn’t let that happen.

He looked up at Bucky and, drawing in a breath said, “dammit, Buck, I think I love you.”

Bucky stopped for a moment, then smiled and look down at Steve.

“Took you long enough,” Bucky replied, and he leaned down for a kiss.

It was then that Steve knew he would never let this man go.

***

For weeks, Tony felt numb. He felt numb during Thanksgiving, numb on the ride back to Boston, and numb throughout the whole next week of classes. Being numb was easier than addressing every confusing thought he’d had since Rhodey had kissed him. No, that was the first thing he needed to address. Rhodey hadn’t kissed him; they’d kissed each other. As soon as he admitted that to himself, a bit of the stress weighing on him lifted.

Tony prided himself in being logically and scientifically minded, so when he felt that little bit of relief, he tried an experiment. For days he’d been working on the hypothesis that if he ignored what had happened, he’d feel better, but he felt awful. Maybe, if he started admitting certain things to himself, he could alleviate a bit more stress.

Over the next few days, Tony felt as though he couldn’t sleep. He was a zombie during classes, and at night, when he should’ve felt tired, he’d instead stare and the ceiling and try to piece together what was going on in his brain. The first thing he thought about were the risks associated with something like this. He heard of what happened to gay people, about how they were beaten or arrested or died young. And, he knew how much the media would eat up a story like this. But, Tony wasn’t historically one to give a lot of weight to the risks of an endeavour, and so, in keeping with tradition, he tried to dismiss those concerns.

The next two important components: how he actually felt and then, what to do about it, were the hardest. He wrestled with his own thoughts, trying to take into account all the times he found himself staring at Rhodey, how Rhodey made him feel so safe and so alive, and how long he’d tried to deny what was going on between them to no avail. He’d only get so far before it became too much, and he’d shut those thoughts out again, turn over, and try and fall asleep. This cycle continued until the week before finals, when finally, he woke up knowing that he couldn’t sit on this any longer.

That afternoon, mustering up all his confidence, he knocked on the door of Rhodey’s dorm room. Rhodey opened the door and, when he saw Tony, his neutral expression broke for just a second to reveal a mix of hurt and confusion.

“Please don’t slam the door on me,” Tony said quickly. “Please, let me come in. You’re right. We need to talk about what happened.”

Rhodey considered this for a moment before, making a face that Tony had seen so many times, decided that, against his better judgement, he was going to hear Tony out. Tony stepped inside, Rhodey shut the door, and then Rhodey went to sit down in his desk chair. Tony felt jittery, too energized and nervous to sit down, and he looked at Rhodey, sitting across from him, waiting patiently for Tony to speak. After a deep breath, Tony did.

“I… hate the way I feel about you,” he said.

Rhodey sighed.

“I know, I know, great start, Tony,” Tony said quickly, “but I wanted to be honest. It confuses me, and scares me, and makes my head spin, because it’s so real and strong and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Rhodey regarding him with a bit of a nicer expression, but said nothing.

“I don’t know if I can be with you. I think I want to, but honestly, Rhodey? I’m terrified. Of the reporters and my family’s image, maybe, but mostly of how damn hard it is to be two guys that-” Tony’s voice felt even shakier, and he took a moment to get his bearings. “To be two guys that, one day, might love each other. The world doesn’t want us to be happy. The world thinks we’re sick and that we’d be better off dead, but I’ve never felt happier than when I’m with you, and that’s the truth.”

Rhodey sat for another moment in silence before nodding, standing up, and going to give Tony a hug. Against his will, Tony felt a few tears start to flow, then more, and he began shaking even harder. Rhodey held him until they slowed down, and they stood together, in the middle of his dorm room, sharing in the weight of what they both now knew to be true. When Tony had finally regained his composure, Rhodey looked down at him.

“I really like you, Tony,” he said, “and your fears are very real, but who knows what’ll happen in the future? Right now, can we have this? Even if it’s just between us, in private?”

Tony gave Rhodey a small smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”


End file.
